第146页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第146页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at
first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another
casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell,
and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not
Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
'How provoking!' exclaimed Miss Ingram: 'you tiresome monkey!'
(apostrophising Adele), 'who perched you up in the window to give
false intelligence?' and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I
were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the newcomer
entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady
present.
'It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,' said he, 'when
my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very
long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate
acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.'
His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as
being somewhat unusual,- not precisely foreign, but still not
altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester's,- between
thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he
was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer
examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or
rather that failed to please. His features were regular, but too
relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of
it was a tame, vacant life- at least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till
after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.
But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as
being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered,
and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such
as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an
unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no
power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in
that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the
low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of
the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him- for he
occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire and kept shrinking still
nearer, as if he were cold- I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think
(with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater
between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and
the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious
friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of
the old adage that 'extremes meet.'
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times
scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not